Brain Damage
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Ryohei is blasted into the future. Maybe.


**Title: **Brain Damage  
**Universe: **Reborn  
**Theme/Topic: **N/A  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Character/Pairing/s:** RyoheixHibari, Tsuna, Shamal, Reborn, Gokudera, Yamamoto (maybe signs of YamaxGoku?)  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** None I can imagine.  
**Word Count:** 2,135  
**Summary:** Ryohei is blasted into the future. Maybe.  
**Dedication:** swinku- YOU ARE MINE K?**  
A/N:** I AM SO DUMB. I FORGOT HOW TO WRITE ALL THE CHARACTERS. SIGH. Also, I was going to fix this at work but I ended up not having time nor the brain power to attack it, so I am posting it raw and hopefully someone can tell me what to do to make it um, not suck so much?  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, though I wish constantly.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

* * *

It started with the announcement that Ryohei had been put in the infirmary by Hibari (again), after the boxer had challenged the disciplinary officer to a fight (again) on their way to school (for the third time this week, actually). The only difference between those other times and this time was that this time Ryohei would probably miss the rest of the school day on account of his not being able to walk.

Everyone naturally rushed to the nurse's office when they heard, and as expected, the group found the poor boxer shuttered away in some forlorn corner of the infirmary, stuffed between a rickety-looking display skeleton and the ancient pill cabinet.

"I don't have time for boys," Shamal declared by way of explanation as he flipped through one of his ero magazines. "But I gave him some band-aids anyway, since I'm such a nice guy."

"Band-aids aren't enough in this case!" Tsuna exclaimed worriedly as they all gathered around the mummy-in-the-corner-that-had-Ryohei's eyes.

"I'm fine," the older boy declared, somehow managing to sound energized around the mass of bandages covering his face and body. He even tried to stand so he could prove it to them, and while his efforts were valiant, they ultimately proved ineffectual when he promptly crashed back to the floor after his knees gave out (though not before he hit the skeleton on the way down and slammed his chin against a couple of fake ribs).

"Oi, watch it," Shamal warned, before giggling when he got to the centerfold. "Oh Ayumi-chan!"

Everyone ignored him.

"Are you okay, senpai?" Tsuna asked shakily. "I mean. Besides the not walking part. You're not dying right?"

"Feel great!" Ryohei assured him, with enthusiasm to spare. "Today was the best day of my life!"

"He has brain damage," Gokudera theorized, the explosives expert scoffing and shoving his hands into his pockets when the sight of the badly injured Sasagawa made Hayato invariably think back on his own failed fights against Hibari Kyouya. He immediately became irritated. "Tch. That damned Hibari. I should go over there right now and kick his sorry ass…"

Ryohei punched him in the face.

And then fell down onto his own face right after that, when his knees gave out again.

"WHAT THE HELL?!" Gokudera snarled, and had two sticks of dynamite in his fingers instinctively, already lit and ready to go.

"Maa, maa," Yamamoto soothed, like that _meant_ anything, the taller boy licking his thumbs and index fingers before pinching the ends of the TNT fuses and killing the flames just like that. "You shouldn't be so angry. Maybe he's delirious. It happened to one of my senpai the other day, when he got hit in the head with a baseball. He did hysterical things for hours."

"How was that hysterical?!" Gokudera demanded. "It _has _to be brain damage. Because if _you_ think it's funny that puts him at the same level as you!"

"I'm fine!" Ryohei countered cheerfully, voice muffled by the… floor.

Tsuna stared as he processed all of this (he always was a bit slower than everyone else). "Brain…damage…huh?" he said, and swallowed. "I see."

"I'm fine! I'm great! I saw the future!" Ryohei insisted. "I saw us in ten years. And twenty! And more!"

Everyone blinked.

"Yeah. Maybe we should send him to a hospital with real doctors," Gokudera posited after a beat. "Either that or put him out of his misery. And then go and kick that damned Hibari's ass…"

Ryohei punched him in the face again.

And then fell down—again.

Gokudera staggered backwards. "OKAY NOW I'M REALLY MAD."

Yamamoto laughed and held him back good-naturedly. "Maa, maa."

"I'm telling you, I _saw the future_!" Ryohei reiterated, as passionately as he could with his cheek pressed flat against the office floor. "I _knew_ I was drawn to Hibari-san for a reason. It's fate! We're tied together by destiny! Ultimate rivals! Best partners!"

Tsuna held out his hands in a placating manner then, thinking that letting Sasagawa-senpai get all worked up like this was probably bad for the older boy's wounds. "Er…that's nice, senpai. Let's all just calm down while I call an ambulance, okay? We don't want you moving around too much in case your head is bleeding internally or something." He moved towards the phone slowly then, so as not to startle the clearly delirious boxer into lashing out and punching any more (kind of) innocent people in the face.

However, just as Tsuna was about to take the phone off its cradle and begin dialing, a voice suddenly announced, "It isn't internal bleeding."

"AH!" Tsuna screamed, when Reborn appeared right behind him seemingly out of thin air, the tiny hitman suspended by a complicated looking spy-type wire mechanism that was coming out of a hole where one of the ceiling tiles very clearly used to be. "Reborn! Oh god, my heart." Tsuna clutched his chest and took several deep breaths to try and calm himself.

Reborn looked down at Ryohei. "It isn't internal bleeding," he diagnosed again, knowledgably.

"It's not?"

"Nope."

Tsuna breathed a sigh of relief when he processed that, hand still over his heart. "Oh, that's good to hear."

"He really did see the future," the toddler added then, and immediately sent his charge's blood pressure sky high again.

"What?!"

"It's because today, Sasagawa Ryohei nearly died."

Tsuna looked like he was finally having that stroke he'd been trying so earnestly to avoid over the course of Reborn's last few announcements. "_Died_?"

"He was on the brink of leaving this world," Reborn assured the future 10th generation leader, like he was saying something as simple as, "today is a nice day." The tiny killer lowered himself to the floor then, unclipping himself from his pulley before waddling over to appraise Ryohei professionally. Tsuna stared after his teacher with something like twitching incredulity.

"IF HE NEARLY DIED SHOULDN'T WE CALL THE AMBULANCE?"

Reborn ignored him and spoke to Ryohei. "Today, your life flashed before your eyes."

"That's exactly it!" Ryohei exclaimed happily, and looked even more cheerful than before now that _someone _here finally understood him.

"But…when your life flashes before your eyes you aren't supposed to see the _future_," Yamamoto offered sensibly, looking confused (in a good-natured way) as he continued to hold on to a struggling Gokudera (good-naturedly).

Reborn reached out and patted the only part of the boxer not covered in bandages. His eyeball. "Not normally. But using the power of just their own bodies, he and Hibari generated so much energy during their fight that it became possible to see the future. That's why when he nearly died and his life flashed before his eyes, he got to see his _whole_ life," the hitman explained. "In the mob business we call this Life and Death Flash."

"Oh!" Yamamoto said, like that explained everything. "I see."

Tsuna gaped. "Wait what part of that is normal?!"

"So… it's like the power of the ten year canon. But from fists?" Gokudera said as he clocked Yamamoto on the head and finally struggled out of the big idiot's grasp.

"Right," Reborn confirmed. Then, his hand still on Ryohei's eyeball, he asked, "What did you see?"

Ryohei grinned stupidly. "Hibari-san! I got to kiss him! He blushes cute."

Silence.

Gokudera cleared his throat. "Uh, Reborn-san…are you sure it's not brain damage after all?" he asked, after a moment.

"It's true!" Ryohei insisted, eyes all fired up at the memory. "He let me call him 'bari-chan and only punched me in the face a little when I hugged him."

"Eh," Shamal grunted. "More girls for me."

No one else really knew what to make of it. Well, except for Reborn maybe.

Because the hitman—unfazed—just turned to a white-faced Tsuna and declared, "Your family is strong _and _close. Isn't that nice, Tsuna?"

"I…" Tsuna blinked and looked towards the bed. "I think I'm going to go lie down for a while."

"Not unless you're wearing a skirt, you're not," Shamal protested, without looking up from his magazine.

"The floor's fine." Tsuna sat down on the floor and stared at Ryohei with wide, shocked eyes. "I didn't think senpai was like that."

"It's fate!" Ryohei insisted. "We're tied together forever!"

Yamamoto laughed. "How nice!"

"You're a dumbass," Gokudera sighed.

Reborn only looked at the boxer knowingly. "So what are you going to do about it from now on, Ryohei?"

Ryohei clenched his fist and somehow, managed to hold it aloft by the sheer strength of his determination alone. "I'll show 'bari-chan the power of my love!"

Gokudera blinked. "With your fist?"

"That's a good idea," Reborn confirmed.

To which everyone else could only say, "IT IS?!"

Reborn nodded. "Work on making it so that next time, Hibari can see the future you have together as well, Sasagawa-san."

"I will!" Ryohei vowed. "Ah, 'bari-chan! Wait for me! I'll show you the way!"

Gokudera groaned. "I feel kind of sick now too," he admitted, and looked just about ready to join Tsuna on the floor.

Reborn simply turned around and headed back towards his pulley, looking generally unaffected by the revelations made just now. "Having a strong rival is a good method of getting stronger," he said sagely, as he hooked his belt to the wire and began to hoist himself up again.

"That's true!" Yamamoto agreed, still smiling. "It's the same for baseball. We play harder when we have a match against our biggest rival schools."

"God, shut up," Gokudera grumbled, and shoved Yamamoto on instinct. "That's completely different."

"But he's not wrong. It's a good lesson for you to learn from Yamamoto, Gokudera," Reborn suggested, when he was just inches away from sliding up into the ceiling. "He seems to be a few levels ahead of you that way."

Gokudera bristled at the suggestion, even though Reborn was _very obviously baiting him._ "He's _what_?"

Yamamoto laughed and rubbed the back of his neck modestly. "That was nice of you to say, Reborn!"

"All of you get stronger soon, okay?" Reborn called down in parting, and then promptly disappeared from view. The missing ceiling tile surreptitiously slid back into place.

A moment.

And then, "Like hell you're a higher level than me. I'm gonna kick your ass right now," Gokudera snarled, looking up at the grinning Yamamoto with his lip curled challengingly.

"Does that really make us rivals?" Yamamoto posed thoughtfully, and didn't even register Gokudera's animosity. "That's great! I'm so glad."

From the floor, Ryohei and Tsuna watched the pair, the two of them thinking very different things.

"Ah, I want a rematch with 'bari-chan right now," Ryohei sighed, sounding dreamily nostalgic as he witnessed Yamamoto and Gokudera's bickering.

Tsuna slapped himself in the face once, just to see if he was dreaming. He wasn't.

"Uh," he murmured, and shakily got to his feet, making his way over to the phone again.

He swallowed and picked it up, dialing 411 very slowly. In the background, Gokudera tried to punch Yamamoto while Yamamoto dodged easily, evading more on instinct than from any knowledge that he was actually being attacked.

"Hey, if we're real rivals now, does that mean I need to come up with a cute nickname for you too?"

"NO!"

"But Sasagawa-senpai has 'bari-chan. How about Ha-chan? That's nice, right?"

"I'LL KILL YOU."

Tsuna breathed in relief when a click on the other end meant that someone had_ finally_ picked up. "What's your emergency?" the voice said, with a methodical calm that was actually kind of soothing given Tsuna's otherwise chaotic life.

"Um… well…" he began.

And then something exploded in the background.

Tsuna yelped and ducked. "I uh… I have three people here… who might have brain damage?"

A beat.

Followed by some more explosions in the background, Gokudera's rage-filled shouts, Yamamoto's cheerful "maa, maas," and through it all, Ryohei's lovelorn sighs.

"Make that… three people who _definitely _have brain damage." Tsuna amended. "Please send help. Uh… thank you."

And then he hung up, feeling infinitely comforted now that that was taken care of.

Shamal however, promptly barked in laughter. "Four people with brain damage!" he diagnosed.

Tsuna blinked. "Eh?"

But the doctor didn't say anything again after that, continuing to flip through his magazine instead. Because as far as he was concerned, if Tsuna hadn't realized on his own that he'd forgotten to stay on the line to give the operator his name and address, there wasn't really much hope for the kid anyway.

And as they waited, Gokudera continued trying to choke the life out of Yamamoto. Yamamoto laughed the whole time and Ryohei wished it was himself and Hibari all over again.

In the meantime, Tsuna waited for the ambulance to come (they sure were slow nowadays) and wondered who the fourth victim that Shamal had been referring to was.

**END**


End file.
